Chapter 96 whirlwind of thoughts she hid
Katherine stopped the Rubik's cube mid-spin. Her eyes narrowed. At the front of the room, a girl trembled, her hands pressed to her forehead. Water from her bottle dripped cruelly onto her books and clothes, a trail of liquid humiliation.
Near the door, the muffled laughter of a group of boys provided the soundtrack to the bullying.
A paper ball was thrown, hitting its target with cowardly precision. The girl didn't scream this time; her silence was the sound of her spirit being broken. The class, newly formed and fragmented, watched everything with cowardly neutrality. No one moved. No one reached out. The bullies, feeling victorious and untouchable, entered the next room to the echo of their own arrogant footsteps. Katherine watched the girl try to save her soaked notebooks. The magic cube in her hand stopped. The “good mood” that was already lacking that morning evaporated completely, replaced by a dangerous coldness.
Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed across the wood. Three comic books were thrown onto Katherine's desk. She looked up from the void and found Jessica Mendes rubbing her forehead with a mischievous, victorious smile on her lips.
“I got three of them back for you,” Jessica teased, her voice laden with vibrant complicity. “Now you don't have to cry anymore.”
Katherine flipped through the pages with nimble fingers. Ironically, she had already devoured each of those stories. Without showing any emotion, she pushed the books to the back of the drawer and picked up her Rubik's cube. The colors spun in her hands with hypnotic speed, a reflection of the whirlwind of thoughts she hid beneath that icy facade.
The classroom plunged into a tense silence as the bell approached.
Next to her, Octavio acted like a silent rebel, camouflaging his cell phone under his textbook, lost in a game broadcast. Further ahead, Bruno Spence kept his head down, his pen scratching the paper with silent fury. Since he had been forced to sit next to Katherine, his wounded pride had turned him into a monk of studies. He needed to surpass her. He needed to prove that his supposed male intellectual superiority was not just a myth. For him, Katherine was the ultimate challenge, the wall he had sworn to tear down.
On the other side, the scene was almost comical. Gabriel Park, in a desperate attempt to decipher Katherine's impenetrable heart, had shaved his head. He sought the “masculine brutality” he imagined to be her weak point, letting himself be burned by the sun from the window in the hope that darker skin and a rough look would buy him a second of the girl's attention.
Meanwhile, Jessica Mendes immersed herself in complex calculations, her draft filled with the urgency of someone seeking a scientific answer to life's dilemmas. The rest of the class just went with the flow, preparing their math material in suffocating monotony.
But the peace was shattered in a second.
“Ah!” A terrified scream cut through the air, coming from the classroom entrance.
Katherine stopped moving the Rubik's cube. Her cold eyes turned to the source of the noise.
In the front row, a petite girl covered her forehead with her hands, her shoulders shaking in silent sobs. Her water bottle had fallen, the liquid spilling mercilessly over her books and clothes, as if washing away her dignity.
Near the door, a group of boys reveled in the scene, their laughter echoing like whips. One of them, in a gesture of pure cowardice, threw a paper ball that hit the girl squarely on the forehead. She didn't scream. Her silence was the sound of someone who had grown accustomed to pain.
The entire class froze. The coldness of that environment was palpable. No one moved. No one dared to break the school's code of silence.
The aggressors, feeling untouchable under the protection of others' indifference, turned their backs and entered the next room, still laughing. The girl began to wipe the water from her desk with mechanical, solitary gestures, under the curious but empty stares of her classmates.
Katherine watched the scene, her face impassive, but her hands squeezed the Rubik's cube with a force that almost crushed it. The “good humor” she had been trying to maintain evaporated, giving way to a cold and calculating fury.
“Where are you going?” Jessica Mendes turned abruptly, her eyes catching Katherine's movement.
“Just going for a walk,” Katherine replied, her voice sounding as fluid and detached as the wind blowing through the corridors.
“Wait for me!”
Without asking anyone's permission, the two left the classroom. Cauan Laser, sitting in the back, felt his jaw lock. He couldn't digest how such a sloppy girl, who seemed to treat life like a game, could boast top marks in so many subjects. However, the memory of Katherine's English test—a blank piece of paper, a desert of answers—brought a cruel smile to his lips. At least she's a failure at something, he thought, feeling a petty sense of relief.
Meanwhile, Katherine and Jessica descended the stairs with an elegance that seemed out of place in that oppressive school. But the peace was shattered when they reached the second floor. The sound of mocking laughter and plastic being crushed echoed through the hallway.
As they turned the corner, the scene they encountered would make anyone's blood boil. Cristiane Pedrozo, small and defenseless, was cornered against the railing. Her water bottle—a simple object, perhaps her only comfort that day—was being crushed under the foot of a boy who laughed as if he were watching a circus show.
Katherine stopped. Her cold eyes focused on the door sign: “International Computer Olympiad.” The school's elite. Students who considered themselves gods just because they knew how to code.
“Doesn't your classroom have a water cooler, piggy?” the boy sneered, kicking the remains of the bottle. “Why are you invading our territory? This water cooler is for the elite, not for the rest of the Ordinary Class.”
Mirela Crispim, one of the stars of the Olympic class, let out an affected giggle.
“I thought we wouldn't see your unlucky face anymore after the class division, Cristiane. But here you are... being a walking failure and embarrassing the name of our old class.”
“She's just going back to the sewer she came from, Mirela,” another boy added, crossing his arms over his nearly two-meter height.
Cristiane kept her head down, her hands shaking, bearing the weight of the words as if they were stones. But the nightmare was just beginning. Claire, a girl with impeccable looks and a heart of glass, came out of the computer room shouting:
“It was you, wasn't it?! You stole my limited edition lipstick!”
“What? Claire, your lipstick is gone?”